Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue–Sun, 10am–6pm; Thu, 10am–9pm
Opening: Tuesday, July 15, 2025, 7pm–10pm
Today
Ongoing
Summer Semester 2025
Information, 22 April – 25 July 2025
Upcoming
Tanya Lukin Linklater: _structural_flex_
Lecture, 8 July 2025, 19:00
Overture – Graduate Exhibition
Exhibition, 15 July – 10 August 2025, 19:00
Florence Jung: Doing nothing?
Lecture, 24 June 2025, 19:00
Rabih Mroué: Shot/Counter Shot. Rethinking the Reverse
Lecture, 17 June 2025, 19:00
Adir Jan & Emrah Gökmen: On the Shores of the Munzur, on the Shores of the Murat
Concert, 12 June 2025, 20:00
Miloš Trakilović: Love Songs & War Machines
Lecture, 10 June 2025, 19:00
Anna Roberta Goetz: 36. Bienal de São Paulo. Not All Travellers Walk Roads / Of Humanity as Practice
Lecture, 3 June 2025, 19:00
Jimmy Robert
Lecture, 27 May 2025, 19:00
Klein: No Degree, No Budget, No Problem
Lecture (20.5.) Concert (21.5.), 20 – 21 May 2025
Julian Irlinger: Reanimation and Reconstruction
Lecture, 13 May 2025, 19:00
İmran Ayata & Bülent Kullukçu: Songs of Gastarbeiter
Music Lecture, 8 May 2025, 19:00
Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven Earth)
Screening (5.5.) Lecture (6.5.), 5 – 6 May 2025, 19:00
Helen Marten: Animal Hours
Lecture, 29 April 2025, 19:00
Application: Master of Arts Program in CURATORIAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES
Application, 10 April – 31 May 2025
Semester Break Spring 2025
Information, 14 February – 21 April 2025
Water Cooler Talks 2025
Event, 8 – 9 February 2025
Rundgang 2025
Exhibition, 7 – 9 February 2025, 10:00–20:00
Trisha Donnelly
Lecture, 30 January 2025, 19:00
Kerstin Brätsch: Parasite Painting
Lecture, 28 January 2025, 19:00
Emma Enderby: Curating in and out of Place
Lecture, 14 January 2025, 19:00

Kerstin Brätsch: Parasite Painting
In her lecture, Kerstin Brätsch will explore the major themes of her artistic practice, which centers on the idea of painting, oscillating between a conceptual analysis of the medium and a devotion to painterly processes. Brätsch uses painting alongside performance and collaboration to question the psychological, physical, and social expressions of the body. In her focus on the medium, she seeks to destabilize and expand the very definition of painting. A central theme is the relationship between painting and subjectivity, a connection that is softened, subverted, and sometimes parodied in her work. This becomes particularly evident in her engagement with the metaphysical strands of abstraction, the animistic qualities of painting and the interrogation of the occult.
To question the agency of painting and engage with it as an expanded field, Brätsch invites artisanal practices (including stained glass, paper marbling, and stucco marmo) and sustained collaborations into the equation, moving from the personal to the collective to challenge the medium’s largely uncontested history. In addition to her creative alliances with craftspeople, Brätsch founded the collective DAS INSTITUT with German artist Adele Röder in 2007, which harnesses the energy of two female creators working in tandem. Since 2010 she has been working with the male American artist Debo Eilers under the moniker KAYA, which negotiates different identities, hierarchies, and power structures. While DAS INSTITUT is ephemeral in spirit, KAYA can be harsh and brutal.
Brätsch studied at Universität der Künste in Berlin (Meisterschüler Prof. Lothar Baumgarten, 2008) and Columbia University, New York (MFA 2007). Recent solo projects and commissions are BAUBAU (a play space for kids), Gropius Bau, Berlin (2024); Die Sein (Para Psychics), Ludwig Forum Aachen, 2022; MIMIKRY, Fridericianum, Kassel (2023); Memory (Fossil Psychics and Stone Mimicry), Luma Foundation, Café du Parc, Arles (2021) and Fossil Psychics for Christa, The Museum of Modern Art, Terrace Café, New York (2019). She has a solo show upcoming at the Munch Museum in Oslo in 2025. Brätsch’s work has been featured in major group exhibitions such as Clandestine Knowledge, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2023); The Milk of Dreams: 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2022); The Botanical Mind, Camden Arts Center London (2020) and, as KAYA, the Whitney Biennial, New York (2017). Brätsch received the Guenther Peill Price from the Guenther Peill Foundation and the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2020, the Edward Munch Award in 2017 and the August Macke Prize in 2014. As KAYA, together with Debo Eilers, she received the Villa Romana Prize in 2019.